A Bloomberg report coming out of the recent Wii preview conferences quotes Nintendo president Satoru Iwata saying he wants to expand Wii's reach beyond traditional markets. "We want to appeal to mothers who don't want consoles in their living rooms, and to the elderly and to young women," Iwata said in a September 14 interview. "It's a challenge, like trying to sell cosmetics to men."
Japanese analysts are bullish on Wii. Enterbrain's Hirokazu Hamamura says, "Wii definitely could become the most popular console of all time. Non-gamers can see how fun it is just by looking at people playing it, and that's very different from the PS3 or Xbox 360." "Wii is the first machine that has the potential to truly prompt people to use the Internet on their television," Nomura Securities' Eiichi Katayama said. "It could turn into the next-generation television."
"If we can do this, the Wii could break all the boundaries in terms of user rates for game consoles," Iwata said. "We are not battling Sony or Microsoft... Our enemy is consumer indifference to games."